Former RuneScape creator Andrew Gower admits that he never planned to make another MMORPG — at least until enough fans convinced him to give it another try. Thus he and his tiny team at Fen Research put together a small-scale MMO as a sort of spiritual successor to the RuneScape spirit. This, of course, became Brighter Shores.
Ever since its out-of-the-blue announcement earlier this year, I’ve been eager to get my grubby little mitts on this title and see if it has more to offer than totally adorable tile-based scenes, which is exactly what I’ve been doing in the press preview ahead of the early access launch today. So come with me as I venture into Brighter Shores!
You’re not going to be drowning in character creation options upon starting, but this is still an incredibly user-friendly format. It felt very natural to go around the circle and fashion my little fantasy punk adventurer from the available options and colors. And before you ask, yes, you can be only human. But you can be a human with a mohawk!
My character started in a guard captain’s office, apparently one of several new recruits to replace a platoon of missing soldiers. This is a very RuneScape-like layout, and if you’re not familiar with that, it means that you’ve got this rotatable diorama that you explore like an adventure game (click to move, investigate, and swipe stuff like the common thief you are). It’s all very slick and intuitive, kind of like going around a D&D tileset.
The only drawback here is that you are restricted to seeing the “room” you’re in, with everything beyond being an inky void. I was also a little underwhelmed by the extremely barebones “info” option on characters and objects, which spat out very simple descriptions. It felt like a placeholder until a professional writer could take a crack at it. Hey, I’m a professional writer!
At least initially, there’s nothing about Brighter Shore’s core gameplay that is revolutionary, although I appreciated that the quests felt a little more fleshed out in terms of multiple objectives. There are even links in the quest text to open up the map and show you where you’re supposed to go, which was appreciated for a navigation-challenged individual such as myself. However, this feature won’t work if you haven’t discovered the location naturally through exploration.
Off to the quartermaster to get my first (of three) equipped weapons, a sword. I can’t express how much instant nostalgia the above UI screen gave me. It reminded me of plenty of RPG books and pen-and-paper sheets I used to have when I was younger. Also, it’s not overwhelming me with tons of stats, which is also appreciated.
As I went on to learn my first magic spell (teleport), I noted that it seems you can easily play this game with only the mouse. That feels quite relaxing, since I don’t have to hunch forward to handle the keyboard all the time. Click click clicking my way to success. Then I got the “sense” spell, which highlights interactive objects in a room — handy if you overlooked any.
Yes, you can pet the kitty.
I’ll say that you can tell that Brighter Shores was made with both love and a small budget. It’s functional and cute, but there isn’t that extra layer of polish that it really needs — not only in the writing department, but in character models and animations. It works, but the potential to be better is clearly apparent.
Combat in Brighter Shores is a little odd. When you get into a combat scenario, you are given some basic info about the enemy (such as weaknesses) and instructed to choose your starting weapon or attack. From there it’s an auto-turn-based affair as characters trade blows and you can interject with different strategic weapons, potions, or abilities (there are empty slots for these on the UI). But not at the start, as all I had was my cool red sword. So auto-swinging it was!
It should also be noted that you cannot attack, nor be attacked by, more than one mob at a time, and you fully heal up once combat resolves.
Like RuneScape, Brighter Shores is designed around skills (“professions”) that you level independently of each other. Different areas have various professions, which are further broken down into an assortment of objectives to pursue. Most are non-combat, although the Guard profession can only be advanced through fighting. While going through the tutorial, it’s apparent that having the right level of skills will be vital to completing certain quests.
Of course foraging and crafting would be next up, and fortunately, both are pretty simple to understand. I made a few health potions to help an injured captain and got a nice skill-up in the process.
It was about this time in what I thought was still the tutorial that I hit a hard skill wall: I needed to train up in bows to progress in a quest. And I couldn’t learn bows until I was a level 15 guard. So it was off to the nearby training grounds to GRIND. THEM. SKILLS.
This should give some indication how Brighter Shores works. You can’t simply combat your way through quests; you’re going to have to hit certain skill or accomplishment milestones to activate the next portion. In this, Brighter Shores is far more RuneScape than your traditional MMO.
I didn’t mind this too much because it felt more like an actual RPG and adventure game than your typical streamlined MMO experience. Grindy, yes, but in a laid-back, relaxing way. I liked getting some useful loot drops and gradually gearing up my guard skill, although I was antsy for some special abilities or something to do during combat other than watch it play out.
The way I think of it, Brighter Shores doesn’t have a gameplay loop so much as a whole series of nested and interdependent checklists. To finish a quest, you’ve got to work down the list and meet every pre-requisite, and that’s probably going to take some serious time. The good news is that you can work on multiple quests in parallel, and the progress you make skilling for one may help another.
After a few hours, I found this MMO to be a very chill, somewhat charming, and slightly underdeveloped RuneScape clone with an engaging tabletop-like presentation. It’s going to stay on my desktop for sure, and I’m keenly interested to see how its early access and future development proceeds.
MOP’s Chris also got to preview the game; his thoughts differ from mine in several ways, so tune in for his take this afternoon!
